Limbo (25 page)

His father was strict and conservative. He was a surgeon, the head physician in the hospital in his hometown. Entirely devoted to his work, always absent, uninvolved in his children's lives. He never could have imagined that his father, so committed to making money and toeing the line, had once been a nut who hitchhiked all over the world. After he got married, did his residency, had kids, and made a name for himself, all that remained of his travels were a few exotic words, a few incongruous objects in the bourgeois living room of their apartment (a Kurdish amulet, a sitar, a narghile) and an encyclopedia from 1974, even though by then all he cared about was his career as a surgeon at the public hospital. He never read; he wasn't interested in books. All he talked about were medical conferences and golf. But every once in a while, on those rare evenings he spent at home, his son would catch him flipping through that encyclopedia. It made Mattia curious, too. He picked up the first volume and couldn't put it down. He read the whole thing, from A to Z.

The encyclopedia was called
Peoples of the Earth
. Twenty or so hardcover volumes bound in white cloth. All about the habits and customs of the most bizarre peoples on earth. The Padaung in Burma, whose women elongate their necks with gold rings, the Bushmen, the Fulan, the Nuba, the Indios tribes in the Amazon, the Maori. Complete with color photographs of women whose bottom lips are deformed by disks as big as plates, of Siberians in the taiga, of Eskimos on the polar ice cap, of pygmies in the forest, of bare-breasted Polynesian women in the lagoon. But the photographs that intrigued him the most were of Afghanistan. A country closed for centuries to foreigners, who were allowed to venture there only during brief windows of time in the 1920s and 1930s and again in the 1960s and 1970s. Photographs of mountains as sharp as knives, the crests adorned with snow; thirsty hills; prehistoric-looking villages clinging to the edge of a cliff; caravans of nomads and camels crossing the desert; proud, wild warriors in boundless landscapes. But the most surprising photograph of all was of a dead goat. Its carcass, rather: decapitated, gutted, stuffed, and blown up like a balloon. Men on horseback were using it like a ball. The caption explained that this was the ancient national sport of Afghanistan, played only by noblemen. It was a violent game without rules, in which the goal was to gain possession of the carcass—or what remained of it—by the end of the game. A sport, but also a metaphor for the war that simmered constantly between rebel tribes in the highlands, among people who—finding themselves first at the crossroads of important caravan routes and then of powerful empires—were constantly invaded and conquered, trampled and beaten like that goat; yet they never let themselves be defeated. The principal characteristics of the Afghani people were a disregard for danger and a love of liberty. Mattia was young then, intolerant of everything, authority above all, and he sided with the rebels, whether they were Sandinistas or African activists like Biko. And so Afghanistan was at the top of his list of countries to visit when he had the money to travel. Those impassable, uncharted mountains would have given him the chance to forge new mountain trails, to become famous even. But then there was the war, the mujahedin against the Soviets, and he had to wait until it ended. But it never did. It was followed by the civil war among the mujahedin, then by the Taliban, then the Americans against the Taliban, then ISAF, or whatever the “coalition of the willing” was called. So he could never go. Now Afghanistan was as hard to get to as Mars. “You've been there. You've lived there, spilled your blood there, left behind a part of yourself. It's like you've come from outer space. A messenger. Tell me about it. Take me to Afghanistan.”

“You wouldn't be interested in the things I can tell you,” Manuela says. “I never went to see a game of buzkashi. I don't even know if they play it anymore. Now they pack dead goats with TNT, and if you see a carcass on the side of the road you just hope there's no one hiding behind the hill with a cell phone to set it off as you go by. And the virgin peaks you would have liked to climb might not even exist anymore, because the Americans bombed them to smithereens when they were looking for Bin Laden. And anyway, the mountains are all filled with caves stuffed with PETN and plastic explosives: it wouldn't take much to blow them sky high. I went there like you'd go on a business trip. For me, Afghanistan was just like any other place. Like Kosovo, Lebanon, Macedonia, one of those countries you only know by name, or because our soldiers are there. But when I signed the rules of engagement, Afghanistan became my reward. It was a promotion, which I didn't expect to receive so soon, but which I wanted to honor. I knew I was good, but I hadn't had the opportunity to prove it yet. Not everyone—in fact, almost no one—gets the chance to have the job they want. You can't imagine how hard I had to work, how much I had to prepare, for my deployment. Being a soldier doesn't really make sense these days, unless you're deployed. We don't have borders to defend anymore, in fact, we live on a continent that has abolished them. What was I going to do in Italy? Stamp leave requests? Train pimple-faced recruits? Collect trash? Guard an embassy, or a monument? A soldier isn't a garbage collector or a policeman. I wanted to test myself, to grow, as a person and as a soldier. Afghanistan isn't Kosovo or Albania, it's high risk. For us, it's the highest goal we can aspire to. Afghanistan was my opportunity. But it was more than that. I don't know if you can understand. In the barracks, during training, they explained the purpose of our mission: we were going there for peace-building, to help the weakest, poorest, and most unfortunate people on earth, so they could rediscover their right to live and work. To improve security and guarantee the development of a young nation, a young people; forty-five percent of the population there is under eighteen. In short, we were going to help build the future of the world. I know you don't believe in these things, you think they're all fancy words invented by politicians in order to sell a war to a distracted public that doesn't ever want to get involved in anything.

“But they weren't just words. There were lots of projects to manage, joint efforts to supervise, schools, hospitals, bridges, and roads to build, soldiers to train, things to teach—justice, the meaning of the word
democracy
. For me, this is what it means to be Italian, and to be proud. But words, even these words, wear out if you use them too much or too sloppily. After I'd been there awhile, even I realized that; when some staff general on an official visit to the FOB for a day would dish up those words in a little speech, they annoyed, basically offended me, offended us, because inside that base, under that bitter sun, in that burning sand they sounded hollow, like empty rhetoric. No one—not even me—had the right to speak them without violating the memory of those who had died, for or because of those words. So I forgot about them, and if I hear them now, I'm ashamed. And yet it was precisely because of those words that I went to Afghanistan. I had convictions, ideals. I believed in them.”

Manuela stays in room 302 until midnight. She had written something similar in her diary, but she'd never spoken this way to anyone before—and now she feels relieved that she finally has, at the Bellavista, that she's told these things to Mattia. And she still believes in them. Mattia held her close in his arms, and at a certain point she felt a drop, like burning wax, on her shoulder, and she realized it was a tear. She didn't ask him why he was crying—if it was out of tenderness or joy, regret about the past or the future, for her words, for her, or for himself. Or for all those things put together. She gets dressed and goes to sleep in her house across the way. “To save your reputation,” Mattia jokes. “Because I've only ever slept with my comrades,” Manuela insists. “In an armored vehicle. In the barracks. In the trenches. Out in the open, in the woods or sand. But you're not one of my comrades. You're different, and I like that.”

She takes her fifteen drops of BZD, lights one last cigarette in the dark, and watches Mattia smoking on his balcony across the way; they blow kisses on their fingertips, like teenagers. Then she slides under the covers and barely has time to think with amazement that today has been the strangest day of her life, that she has behaved in a way she could never have imagined herself capable of since becoming a sergeant. Frivolous, immoral, deplorable behavior—censure and official reprimand on her record. She's not unhappy about it, though, her superiors and her men don't know about it, it's her secret, not shameful in the least, in fact, it's joyful, she wouldn't take any of it back, and she falls asleep, flattened by the soporific. And she doesn't wake with a start, sweating with the sensation of having had a dream too horrible to be remembered.

11

HOMEWORK

Operation Goat 4's target—I learned during the morning briefing—was an insurgent responsible for several attacks. The last—a truck bomb driven into a barracks—had resulted in the death of twelve ANA soldiers. His name was Mullah Wallid. The previous regiment had already made three attempts to capture him before winter set in, in analogous operations: Goat 1, Goat 2, and Goat 3. But some infiltrator had always warned him in time, and he always managed to vanish. Like a ghost. Many years earlier, when the Russians fought against the mujahedin, they called them “ghosts” because they never saw them. Like shadows, they would appear suddenly, strike, and vanish. It's difficult to fight a war against ghosts. But Mullah Wallid wasn't a ghost. Intelligence had located him, he was hiding in a village in the Gulistan Mountains, about forty kilometers from Bala Bayak. And now the Panthers had to help Afghani security forces flush him out.
Shona da shona
, shoulder to shoulder.

We assembled in the square of the base, in total darkness. We were given the radio frequency, the abbreviated code for confidential information, and the village code name. We used Italian wines for places. Ninth Company had already done cordon and search at Refosco, Amarone, and Nebbiolo. This time our destination was Negroamaro. Some units were to be transported by helicopter, and would spend the night out in the open, in the mountains. Others would go by land. When Captain Paggiarin read out the assignments, I could barely contain my joy when I realized that Pegasus wasn't going to be left behind. It meant more to me than praise, than a eulogy, than a medal: the only true prize after weeks of humble and unrewarding work, in which everyone—like assassins lurking in the shadows—was waiting for me to make the slightest error, to give in. My platoon was waiting for my first real test on the ground, too, and I knew it. As we headed for the armored vehicles, Jodice noted sarcastically that he was surprised to see me. He thought I'd be asking for a doctor's note. Don't women have a right to three days' rest when they get their periods? How odd that I hadn't managed to get my period right before our mission. “I swear I'll reprimand you this time, Spaniard,” I answered. “You can forget about your leave.”

We proceeded without headlights on a moonless night. As he drove, Zandonà peered through the night scope at the ghostly green outlines of the vehicles in front of us. Jodice was being jerked around in the turret, and was having trouble keeping his balance. Despite the tangle of tightly fastened seat belts strapping me in, I had to hang on to my seat, and with every jolt it felt like they were cutting into my uniform. Puddu was huddled over the radio, murmuring under his breath. He was giving our coordinates, but to me it sounded like a litany. The fifth member of our team was Venier. I chose him because he was the worst gunner in the platoon, and I was hoping my presence would inspire him. Everybody deserves a chance. Assailed by nervous hunger, he nibbled fitfully on an energy bar. His fear had an acrid, sour smell that permeated the tank cabin. We advanced along a rough road that turned into a track, then a path, until eventually even that disappeared into a dry riverbed of white pebbles. The crackle of the radio was the only proof that all of this was really happening. I could feel my heart pounding against my ribs, and I was afraid the others could hear it, too. I'm ready, I kept repeating to myself, I know what I have to do. I've trained five years for a night like this. It's a great privilege to be here. Try to be worthy, Manuela.

Time became an illusion. My bones hurt from being slammed around, my neck muscles burned from being tensed for so long, and my head ached from peering into the dark with my night vision goggles. The valley finally opened up. For the first time in months I caught sight of rows of trees. Zandonà slowed, braked, then wedged the Lince alongside the others in a defensive semicircle. “Remember, no going rogue,” I said, “just follow orders. Everything will be fine.” When we opened the doors, the smell of grass and humidity assailed us. “Good luck, brothers, an eye on your feather,” Zandonà said. “You, too,” I whispered as I jumped down. Jodice kissed his Padre Pio medallion. “Let's go,” I said, making my way into the night.

The column of soldiers clambered up the riverbed, the only access to the village, which, in the pitch black, stood out from the rocks only because its shadow was more intense, the houses thicker and darker. The escarpment was steep and my loaded automatic rifle and bulletproof vest weighed me down. The altitude caught at my breath, but I climbed through it. I would have scaled a mountain with my bare hands. Pumped with adrenaline, I gave and received orders with my heart aflutter, as if I were finally on my way to some long-awaited appointment. We ascended in brief spurts, quick and disciplined, a technique inculcated in us since our first days of training. I was supposed to keep the platoon together, but Venier fell behind; he was leaning against the low terracing wall, panting. I went back to get him. “What's that smell, Sergeant, is it opium?” he whispered, pointing to some plants in the shadows. “Move it, Fox,” I murmured, “don't get us into any shit. I know you won't.” Silently, orderly, we fanned out to encircle the village whose code name was Negroamaro and whose real name I've now forgotten. A handful of mud houses in a valley in the middle of the mountains on the border of Helmand, which was also the border of the area under Italian control. On the other side of the Khash River were the U.S. Marines.